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Thursday, 13 June 2013

Belfast High Court has issued 2 super injunctions in past 12 months

TUV Leader Jim Allister has established that in the past year a further 2 super injunctions have been issued by the High Court in Belfast.
— Stephen Walker (@StepWalkTV) June 13, 2013

More from Jim Allister who broke the news through an Assembly Question here.

"The growth of ‘super injunctions’ is a product of the courts being persuaded to prioritise privacy rights over freedom of expression and press rights within the Human Rights Act. I am far from convinced that this balance is weighted in the right direction, particularly where it is a facility which in practical terms is only likely to be available to those who can afford it.

Since by their very nature such orders do not sit comfortably with the transparency expectations of modern society, it is, I believe, in the public interest that information about the number and lifting of super injunctions should be known."

More information from the BBC of what a super injunction is here and below:

So what is a super-injunction?

"There are different types of injunctions and a super-injunction is the most powerful. A super-injunction stops anyone publishing information about the applicant which is said to be confidential or private - but also prevents anyone from reporting that the injunction itself even exists."

How does a super-injunction work in practice?

"Taking a hypothetical case, a Premiership footballer asks the High Court to stop a kiss-and-tell story from appearing in next weekend's papers, saying that he is a victim of wrongdoing and blackmail by the other party.

If the judge agrees to a super-injunction, the newspaper cannot report the allegations - and it is also prevented from saying that the footballer went to court to gag the paper. If the newspaper breaks the injunction, the editor could be prosecuted for contempt of court."

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Key cases, documents and articles

In Tamiz v Google [2013] here, the High Court in London found Google was not the publisher of defamatory material posted by someone using its blog facility, the judge suggesting you could not hold the owner of a wall responsible for graffiti sprayed on it by someone else.